Blog Articles by keyword: addons



Publishing your raid combat logs

by Tachyon on Mon. 30. August 2010, 18:52

Filed under: raids, addons, combatlog

Publishing your combat logs is a great instrument to analyze your and your comrades-in-arms performance. If done properly, it helps a lot in analyzing mistakes and improving your performance.

Unfortunately I'm the only one in the guild that cares about recording and uploading the combat logs, so when I don't participate in a raid, there's no logs at all.

So lets get you (and hopefully also some members of my raid team) started in combat log publishing, I'm confident you like it!

Enabling combat logging

Enabling the combat log is quite easy, just type the following command in the chat to enable/disable logging:
/combatlogWhen the combat log is enabled, events will be logged to ${wowdir}/logs/WoWCombatLog.txt.
Hint: there's also chatlog option, use /chatlog to have chat output written to ${wowdir}/logs/WoWChatLog.txt.

Manually enabling/disabling the combat log is very cumbersome, but good news is that there is an excellent addon for that: LoggerHead. Loggerhead allows to automatically enable the combat log for selected zones. When you first enter a zone, Loggerhead will ask you if you want to enable logging for this zone. It remembers your decision, and automatically enables/disables the log when you enter/leave a zone afterwards.

Publishing the combat log

My favourite site to upload the logs is worldoflogs.com. It has become the de-facto standard for combat logs, as almost all serious raiding guilds use it.
To be able to upload your logs, you need an account. Once your registered yourself, you can either create a new group for your guild, or apply to join your guild group if it already exists. Once your guild is created (or your application is accepted), you can start to upload logs.

Logs are uploaded using a Java client that gets started with Java WebStart when you click at the 'Client' link on the page. The client allows to load a log file, chose the time segment to upload, and submit it to the server. Once uploaded, delete or archive the WoWCombatLog.txt, otherwise it will bloat and become unnecessary large (slows down parsing, or causes the log to be rejected if its time span is too large).

Feature highlights
Some features and highlights of worldoflogs.com:
  • Combat log analysis - overview, segmentation (by time, boss etc), drill down by player, target, spell, effect etc, it's incredibly powerful. Check your spell mix, for how much you hit and crit, how often which effect procced, how much damage you took, who healed you, the possibilities are endless
  • Guild features - calendar view for raids, participation list for members. Also a great way to check how good a guild performs before you apply (or vice versa: check how good the applicant performed in his or her old guild)
  • Highscores - check the top performances by boss/class/spec

If your guild doesn't yet record their combat logs, I hope you give it a try, it's not a lot of work and certainly worth doing anytime. Remember: it's not a tool to blame others, but to help you and your raid perform better.
And if someone from my guild reads this: I could need someone who records the raid logs when I'm not there, just drop me a note!

Essential Addons: TellMeWhen

by Tachyon on Wed. 31. March 2010, 13:11

Filed under: addons, proc, buff, debuff, cooldown, tellmewhen, arcane, featured

Monitoring your AB stack, MBarr procs and cooldowns of your offensive and defensive abilities is crucial to optimize your performance, especially as an arcane mage.

If you just use normal buff/debuff bar addons (e.g. Elkano's Buff Bars) and cooldown monitor addons (e.g. CooldownTimers3), it's hard to make up specific buffs or debuffs, even more so if you're in a raid environment where you usually have 20+ buffs at a time on you.

But don't despair, there's an Addon out there that does exactly what YOU need.

TellMeWhen is an addon that adds a set of bars to your UI, where each slot can be configured to show a buff, debuff or cooldown, when active, inactive or always, with an optional timer.
I just love this generic approach, as the opportunities are unbounded, and if properly configured it serves all the information you need to use your abilities at the right time.



Before you start using it, make a concept of which things you'd like to have displayed in which bar. The bars can be individually scaled and moved, and in the latest versions of the addon they're dual spec aware (you can define which bars get displayed with each spec). My concept for the bars is as follows:
  • Bar1: Cooldowns for my most essential offensive and defensive abilities.
  • Bar2: Arcane Casting, showing the Arcane Blast debuff stack and Missile Barrage procs
  • Bar3: Powerups, showing active damage boost buffs and procs
  • Bar4: Target debuffs, such as Slow, Frostbolt snare, Frostbite, Living Bomb etc.

Setting up TellMeWhen

After downloading and installing TellMeWhen, go to ESC -> Interface -> Addons -> TellMeWhen. In these interface options, you can customize the number of bars, how many rows and columns they have and in which spec they're active.
Unlocking the bars will show all bars on the UI and allow you to customize them by right-clicking on a slot in the bar and configuring what cooldown, buff or debuff you would like to have displayed there. Note that in the latest versions, you have to check the 'enable icon' option for each slot for it to become active.

Here's a few hints on stuff you may want to display as an arcane mage:

BUFFS/PROCS:
  • Arcane Blast: Debuff, Player, When present, Timer
  • Missile Barrage: Buff, Player, When present, Timer
  • Arcane Power: Buff, Player, When present, Timer
  • Icy Veins: Buff, Player, When present, Timer
  • Pushing the Limit: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (Tier 10 set 2p bonus)
  • Quad Core: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (Tier 10 set 4p bonus)
  • Surge of Power: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (Dislodged Foreign Object)
  • Frostforged Sage: Buff, Player, When present, Timer (ICC revered/exalted Ring)
  • Black Magic, Debuff: Buff, When present, Timer (Weapon Enchant)

TARGET DEBUFFS:
  • Slow: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer
  • Frostbolt: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer (for frost mages or pvp spec)
  • Frostbite: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer (for frost mages or pvp spec)
  • Living Bomb: Debuff, Target, When present, Timer, only if cast by self (for fire mages)

COOLDOWNS:
  • (Name of 'on-use' Trinket): Cooldown, Item, Always, Timer
  • Arcane Power: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Icy Veins: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Presence of Mind: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Ice Block: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Frost Nova: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Mirror Image: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Counterspell: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Blink: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, When usable, Timer
  • Evocation: Cooldown, Spell or Ability, Always, Timer
  • Mana Sapphire: Cooldown, Item, Always, Timer

If you use a non-english client, you have to use the localized names for the buffs, spells, items and abilities (e.g. 'Eisige Adern' for 'Icy Veins' in german clients). When in doubt, check your combat log or buff bar to find out which names the buffs have.

Once you configured the bars, unlock them in the addon settings so they become active. Don't forget to test if they work before heading into combat

Addon Tip: Tell Me When

by Tachyon on Thu. 18. September 2008, 01:32

Filed under: Addons

Manging your cooldowns properly is the bread and butter of the mage class - offensive and defensive tactics rely heavily on certain abilities being available or not.
Sometimes, the common buff/cooldown UI or addons don't suffice, and a custom tailored solution is preferred. For this, I can recommend the TellMeWhen addon.



TellMeWhen allows you to setup icon racks to display any of your buffs, debuffs, cooldowns and reactive abilities the way you want. The icons bars can be scaled and placed anywhere on the screen.

In my case, I set up two racks. The first rack shows some of my mage's most vital abilities (Trinket, Water Elemental, Icy Veins, Frostnova, Ice Block, Coldsnap, mana gem) when they are not on cooldown, and the second rack shows temporary buffs (Trinket, Icy Veins) and procs (from Band of the Eternal Sage and Ashtongue Talisman of Insight).

The first (1) of the screenshot above shows both racks in 'unlocked' mode, showing which spells/buffs/procs I configured for monitoring. During combat, it will look like on the second screenshot (2), here the Icon of the Silver Crescent is on cooldown and its buff is active, same counts for Icy Veins, and Coldsnap is also on cooldown and thus not yet available.

Attach this to your unit frame, and you see all the vital information you need at first glance. Tip for setting the addon up: On-use items usually have a similarly but differenty named buff, for example the item Icon of the Silver Crescent gives a buff called Blessing of the Silver Crescent, so if you want to observe the cooldown, take the item's name, and for observing the buff, take the buff's name.
If you're unsure how the buff is called, make it proc and check its name in your normal buff bar.

Hope you find this addon as useful as I do

Spring in Azeroth

by Tachyon on Sat. 29. March 2008, 14:38

Filed under: tips, addons, macros, videos

Spring comes, with flowers sprouting everywhere!
Well, everywhere but in Azeroth, where the same sparse flora covers the ground as ever.

That can be changed using a few console commands, best assembled into a macro:



The general appearance of nature becomes smoother, more vivid and rich on plants, without having a noticable impact on the frame rate.
If you want to try it: just create the following macro in WoW, and use it. Et voilà: WoW looks young again, like kissed by the spring fairy

/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console groundEffectDist 140
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console farclip 777
/console characterAmbient

This tip comes from Daostrasz, Mage on EU-Turalyon, who also made a beautiful video on the changed visuals. In his Blog, he also provides some explainations to the settings, well worth reading.
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